the ox, trapped in the bottle, and by bottle I mean this blog, and by ox I suggest all I have going on as a writing father of two, wine lover, runner, adjunct english professor, entrepreneur… let’s see, what else do I do….. think that’s it, although if you read I’m sure you’ll find something else; the writing father, writing and wining, running and teaching, blogging; everything in the ox’s life, right here. in. the. bottle. the blog. my books.

Fall 2016, Day 3

Nice first meeting with 100 section. Now I sip coffee after posting to blog I set up for students, thinking how I can intensify creatively the momentum for this semester. Have a plan for 1A, but I’m not too jazzed about it. What do I do. How many teachers, especially adjuncts, ask themselves this, or have such a dilemma? How to make it more exciting for the students and myself as well, and with graduation on the line for me, maybe some of them… I’m left thinking about all my approaches, and that binder I want to keep for this semester, having everything in one spot, an idea I wanted to share with the students but not till I truly and visibly practice what I’m promoting.

3:48PM? Huh, doesn’t feel so, at all. The coffee helps, but now I’m starving. They didn’t have blueberry muffins in the little café by the that other, larger cafeteria-like area. Music playing, people in the hallway (whole reason I put tunes on, to angrily drown them… out… but their volume is incessant and boastful, all of them laughing with each other, in their tenured never-having-to-worry-about-classes octave, nice), still talking, but I imagine my travel next year, where I’ll go and what I’ll speak on. Honestly, after this afternoon’s catalyzing talk on Plath, I think I want to write more on how that book is yay-saying rather than nay, that it’s read wrong over 80% of the time. The meeting with English 100 taught me something, or at least emphasized something to me. That I’m a teacher as well as a writer, that I will share ideas, or what people call “teach”, IN what I write. Like now, again I’m taught and share the idea to grip every moment and mold it to what you want.

This morning, started day with a run. How I wanted to start the week, the note or chord, musical feel I wanted lamented immediately in wee hours. Set out for 13.1, but stopped at 11.5. Pains in both ankles, well as knee right. Either way though, I ran. I pulled the trigger on this week’s gun with a beautiful run into Howarth Park then into Annadel’s thickly dark woods. The run teaching me that I can have whatever I want from today, this week, this semester, next year when I’m traveling. There’s a certain picture of me and I WILL have it. I will continue “generating new ideas” as I heartily suggested to the 100 section. Explosive run, then enriching lecture. I sit in this shared office more than ready, in fact impatient, for the 1A meeting. 3:58PM now. 1 hour, 2 minutes to go. This morning’s run and my pace, which wasn’t that impressive honestly, extends to now. To the notes I’m about to scribble in the Composition Book, then to when I share them with English 1A. Okay… Now I’m jazzed. I’m electric-jazzed, spastically jazz. I’m all jazz. Now go get that binder, from the mailroom, where they keep the supplies. Is that only for full-timers, or can we adjuncted wees help ourselves? Topic for another time, yes.